When drought gripped much of southern Ethiopia recently, farmers across the region lost their crops in parched fields and millions were pushed to the brink of starvation. But as the rains failed, some farmers managed to escape the worst that nature could throw of them.

Thirty-two heavy trucks laden with wheat, oil and pulses are revving their engines as they prepare to roll out of the compound. On convoy days, the works starts early at WFP’s storage depot in Dire Dawa in eastern Ethiopia.

After a succession of poor or failed rains, so many animals have been lost that often families can no longer support themselves. Current WFP estimates indicate that operations in 2009 will target more than eight million people.

Wuditu Assefa spends much of her time travelling, talking to WFP partners and beneficiaries. She is a Field Monitor, based in Dessie in the north of Ethiopia. As she explains here, one of the things she monitors is the MERET project to reduce vulnerability to drought.

Volli Carucci knows how to bring a brown, barren landscape back to life. A dry gully becomes an orchard; an arid hillside turns green with grass. The system is called MERET, which stands for Managing Environmental Resources to Enable Transition. Carucci helped develop it, as Heather Hill explains.

Sheila Sisulu, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), arrived in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, late Wednesday evening on a two-day mission to promote new WFP strategies to tackle the root causes of hunger and poverty.